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Jerusalem has been extolled and glorified since time immemorial. More than any other city in the world, it has been crowned with honour and wreathed in praises. Jerusalem has been called "The City of God", "The Eternal City", "City of the Prophets", "City of Soul and Spirit", "City of Beauty", and a great many other laudatory appellations.
Dedicated archaeologists, probing the secrets of Jerusalem's checkered past, have unearthed artifacts from a plethora of human cultures dating back through all the ages of Mankind. Since the city's very beginnings, the fine stonework of Jerusalem - its ancient reliefs and capitals - has borne silent witness to the skill and pride of its artists and masons.
Relief - The end of the Second-Temple Period
During the first century BCE and the first century CE up to the time of the destruction of both the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 CE, affluent citizens used to prepare sepulchres for themselves and their families.
These burial caves were expertly hewn out of the living rock and embellished with beautiful decorations both inside the burial chamber itself and around the entrance.
Some of these burial caves, from the first century CE, were made out of the rock which borders the Hinnom Valley near the point where it joins the Kidron in the courtyards of the Orthodox Monastery "Akel Dama" (Field of Blood).
On the stone frieze above one of the entrance openings there is a relief with a rose at its centre; on both sides are palm fronds designed as goblets. The top of the relief is decorated with "eggs and darts". Fragments of similar reliefs were found in archaeological excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount near the Hulda gates.
